I have recently come across a few ps2 originals that are in need of repair (for cheap) and I was wondering if it's worth fixing these things or not? Most seem to have various levels of DRE problems. I have seen a few guides online on how to realign the laser and it looks pretty straight forward.
My main reason for getting one up and running is because the original ps2s are far easier to mod to play imports. I have a ps2 slim that I use swap discs on at the moment but it would be a lot nicer if I could just stick in a jp game and have it work. Plus there is the benefit of having the hard drive support for the few titles that can use it.
So how reliable are these things? I have always heard horror stories about them and I don't want to spend the time to refurbish/mod one to have it stop reading disks a year later.